Lymphadenectomy after a positive sentinel node biopsy in patients with cutaneous melanoma. A systematic review

Table 1 Characteristics of studies included in this review

*Author*	Year	Study Method	Study Size	Obs.	CLND	Quality of the evidence (GRADE]
Bamboat (Bamboat et al., 2014)	2014	Retrospective	495	167 (34%)	328 (66%)	Low
Satzger (Satzger et al., 2014)	2014	Retrospective	305	58 (19%)	247 (81%)	Low
Ploeg (van der Ploeg et al., 2014)	2014	Retrospective	1539	158 (10%)	1381 (90%)	Low
Melstrom (Melstrom et al., 2014)	2014	Retrospective	97	21 (22%)	76 (78%)	Very low ^a
Gyorki (Gyorki et al., 2014)	2014	Retrospective	54	18 (33%)	36 (67%)	Very low ^b
Fritsch (Fritsch et al., 2016)	2015	Retrospective	350	140 (40%)	210 (60%)	Very low ^b,c
Mosquera (Mosquera et al., 2017)	2016	Retrospective	2172	716 (33%)	1456 (67%)	Low
Lee (Lee et al., 2016)	2016	Retrospective	471	96 (20%)	375 (80%)	Low
Faries (Faries et al., 2017)	2017	RCT	1755	931 (53%)	824 (47%)	High
Klemen (Klemen et al., 2019)	2019	Retrospective	953	122 (13%)	831 (87%)	Low
Leiter (Leiter et al., 2019)	2019	RCT	473	233 (49%)	240 (51%)	High

Obs Observation, RCT Randomized Clinical Trial
GRADE Working Group grades of evidence
High quality: Further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimate of effect
Moderate quality: Further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and may change the estimate
Low quality: Further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and is likely to change the estimate
Very low quality: We are very uncertain about the estimate
^aDowngraded for indirectness. Only evaluated patients with sentinel lymph nodes in more than one lymph node basin
^bDowngraded for indirectness. Only evaluated patients with head and neck melanoma
^cFailure to identify the populations with CLND or SLNB only

ISSN: 2520-8454